We just wrapped up our first month with E. B. White’s classic The Trumpet of the Swan. Everything about this book is delightful and fits beautifully into the start of the school year. It is gentle and at just the right pace for getting back into learning, but it's filled with rich topics that will pull in even reluctant readers.

My family has a wide range of ages (teenager to baby), and this worked at all levels using the Trumpet of the Swan unit study guide. There is something for everyone in this story as well as the activities. The activities were very easy to adjust to meet my children exactly where they are in their studies and skills.

I chose this book because it is one of my all-time favorites. E. B. White holds a special place in my heart. Charlotte’s Web made me fall in love with reading in third grade, and I’ve never looked back.

My children learned that pond life doesn't stop at the ducks gliding on top of the water or even at the algae growing from the bottom, but that the pond's water is teeming with microscopic life. My daughter lit up when we watched a Watch and Wonder video in the guide that showed this hidden world!

I would recommend this book to readers of any age. Truly, not many middle-grade novels can move an adult as much as they move a 7-year-old, but this one can. I found the dialogue between Louis’s parents quite amusing, while my children enjoyed the dramatic monologues of the cob and Louis’s adventures out in the world. This book is a true family read-aloud.

We spent four weeks reading and exploring the topics in The Trumpet of the Swan. Each week focused on a new topic. We explored each topic through modern resources like videos and podcasts, picture books, activities, and writing.

I always find it rewarding to pair picture books with our read-alouds. Here are a few that we enjoyed throughout the month:

Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner 

Usborne Beginners: Ponds by Emily Bone 

Pond Circle by Betsy Franco 

SPRING! Time to Build a Nest, A Story about Trumpeter Swans by Barbara Renner 

How Do Birds Find Their Way? by Roma Gans 

Just a Lucky So and So: The Story of Louis Armstrong by Lesa Cline-Ransome 

Dizzy by Jonah Winter 

Additional resources we used:

Pond Life: Revised and Updated by George K. Reid 

Pond & River by DK 

Music and How It Works: The Complete Guide for Kids by DK 

Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

If you’d like the full list of picture books to pair with The Trumpet of the Swan, you can find it in this unit study.

The Trumpet of the Swan opens at a remote pond in the Canadian wilderness. So, for our first week, we dove into pond ecosystems. We visited a local pond and observed the wildlife we could spot. We created a mini pond ecosystem in a jar to study the smaller life hidden in the pond. My kids loved this, especially creating the mini ecosystem to observe up close!

When we got home from our adventure, we played a food web game to discover why scientists no longer use food chains. It was fun guessing who eats whom, and some of them were quite surprising! We started pulling out animals and plants and noticing what happened to our pond ecosystem. At the end of the game, we saw exactly what happened at the pond we visited earlier that day; it had become overgrown with duckweed. It was such a great connection. You can find the full game here.

In our second week, we did a Charlotte Mason-inspired nature study through observing, sketching, and narrating about Trumpeter Swans.

I showed my kids how to navigate the Audubon website and the Trumpeter Swan information page. We loved looking at the interactive maps, videos, and artwork and listening to the calls of these beautiful swans. We learned about the comeback story of these once nearly extinct birds and how to tell them apart from Tundra Swans (which people often confuse them with). With our new knowledge, we created nature study notebooking pages about Trumpeter Swans.

We also learned how swans run on water to take off, about animal vocalization, and about Audubon’s mural project to help promote awareness of Trumpeter Swans. We completed oral and written narrations about these resources.

We couldn’t read The Trumpet of the Swan without learning about trumpets and famous trumpet players. We watched videos about Louis Armstrong, how brass instruments work, and the trumpet's amazing history. We also listened to music featuring trumpets. Afterward, we researched trumpets and a famous trumpet player and recorded our findings on notebooking pages.

After four weeks of learning, we wrapped up with a book club party with friends who were also reading The Trumpet of the Swan. We decorated our table to look like the pond in Canada (including the hungry fox Sam saved Louis’s mother from)! We enjoyed s’mores trail mix from Camp Kookooskoos, clam chowder from Boston, and watercress sandwiches from the Ritz Hotel. After lunch, the kids enjoyed (criticizing) The Trumpet of the Swan movie. It’s not always a bad thing when the movie is completely different from the book. The kids observed and noted (very critically) the differences between the book and the movie. It created great conversation.

We added a few extras to our month. We went camping, just like Sam and his father in the Canadian wilderness. We visited Hershey Gardens to learn about avian migration, which connected to Louis's travels throughout the book. We also attended a class on animal habitats at Messiah University's Oakes Museum.

This unit study felt like the perfect way to start our school year. Having all my kids gathered around to listen to the same read-aloud, participate in the same activities, and celebrate together always creates the best memories. It adds to our family culture of shared experiences.

If you’d like to do your own Trumpet of the Swan unit study, you can find everything that I mentioned in this blog post and more in my Trumpet of the Swan guide. Enjoy book lists, weekly projects, videos and podcasts to explore, language arts studies from passages in the book, written narrations, nature study, notebooking pages, and your very own book club party.

Want to save big and create a custom curriculum for your family this year? Choose from my many unit studies and create your own bundle here.

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